I’ve made it through Division 1 of Being and Time. This is my first rereading of this book since 2006. It strange to return to this book because these ideas — especially the ethical themes — connect to memories from the time, almost like music or distinctive scents. Except with philosophy, what is recalled is a perspective — which is precisely what in memory is absent, supplanted by our present perspective, which re-orders past events into the perpetually arrogant “only now do I really understand” of the present mind. What rereading philosophy recalls is the meaning of a time along with its images and facts — and allows a self to return and to justify itself to the self it has become.

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Philosophy has been called the queen of the sciences. It is also the queen of the arts.